When thinking of self-portraits, the first thing which comes to mind is most probably an image of one of the great male artists. It is no surprise that individual self images have almost become icons of a certain historical period or artistic movement. Due to the lack of interest in famous female artists of the past we have come to hear more about their self-portraits only recently. The Renaissance women artists, who started depicting themselves more often than male artists for completely different reasons are particularly interesting. Women who wanted to become artists were in a way forced to produce self-portraits even because of the lack of educational opportunities. They were exempted from the most important learning phase, which made them unable to achieve the same levels of exellence as male artists. The only suitable motifs for them were those considered of lower rank, which did not require excessive intellectual effort. The face was therefore the first motif that became accessible to women as a form of a study of a living model. Inequality urged them to consider with great care how to present themselves to the world. This was not an easy feat, as they had to deal with the contradictions between the social expectations of artists and women. In their self-portraits we can see that they attempted to satisfy both conflicting roles, as well as even more rules. Despite the obstacles they managed to develop creative and innovative self-portraits, using them to communicate to the world about themselves. The most prominent among them are the self images of Italian Renaissance artist Sofonisba Anguissola, who left behind a wide collection of such works of art.
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